Condoms

SOMEONE NEEDS to tell the truth about condoms: They don't offer protection from pregnancy, disease and death. The best of condoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, have a failure rate of 8 percent to 10 percent.As a youth counselor for 20-plus years, I also protest the mentality that equates today's teens with dogs in heat. Teens today are too intelligent and sophisticated to be that stupid when given the facts.It's time for parents, educators and so-called health professionals to raise their level of expectations.

A valet attendant at an Orlando strip club is accused of bringing a McDonald's Happy Meal and condoms to what he thought was a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old in a vacant Clermont home. The 27-year-old man instead found Lake County Sheriff's detectives who'd posed online as children and parents of children offering sex. Alexander Vorobets - a valet attendant at Rachel's in Orlando - was one of 23 men arrested on child-sex or prostitution charges during a seven-day sex sting dubbed "Be Mine" to mark Valentine's Day, Lake County Sheriff's Office announced Wednesday.

The Condom Nation Caravan -- a distinctive 18-wheeler and accompanying van -- makes a stop in Orlando Tuesday, offering free condoms and HIV testing. It will be the third Florida city for the caravan, an initiative of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation , the largest global AIDS organization. The goal? Distributing more than 50 million condoms in the U.S. and encouraging sexually active recipients to use them. It's an ambitious leap from last year, when the campaign passed out 5.5 million condoms to individuals and social-service agencies in 25 states.

Two Polk County teens have been banned from homecoming events, including bids for king and queen, because they offered condoms to students at Mulberry High School as part of their "Let's Wrap This Up" campaign, the Lakeland Ledger is reporting. Montana Fulkerson and Dalton Wiggs offered condoms, as well as candy, in their goody-bag campaign to stand out in a field of more than 20 couples vying for the crowns. Polk County School District spokeswoman Leah Lauderdale said "distributing condoms to solicit homecoming votes" was inappropriate.

I OBJECT to the misleading information given by a certified school nurse in Robert Wallace's column ''Talking With Teens,'' published in The Orlando Sentinel on July 20.The clear and incorrect statement is made that condoms can fail because of ''natural channels existing in latex.'' From a public-health standpoint alone, it is indeed unfortunate that this type of specious argument is foisted on teens under the authority of Dr. Wallace and Mrs. Hunter, R.N.I certainly support the abstinence part of their message.

Once upon a time on Planet Earth -- before the scourge of AIDS -- the subject of condoms rarely came up in polite company. Today, condoms have become the coin of the political realm, while debates break out in the politest of places -- from the Vatican to the Senate to the pulpit to the pew. In the past few days, reports from Rome have indicated that the Vatican is considering sanctioning the use of condoms among married couples when one of the partners...

WHAT WONDERFUL news! There are now condoms for women. Poor guys, the stronger sex - they don't like using condoms: they're uncomfortable, etc. For years, women have had to have diaphragms inserted (causing medical problems), pills prescribed (causing medical problems), tubes tied, etc., but those poor guys - they're uncomfortable!It's time women faced facts. We shouldn't kid ourselves. Is this all worth it? ''Condoms for women.'' Sounds ''uncomfortable,'' doesn't it?Francine MeinelschmidtMIRAMAR

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- To prevent the spread of AIDS, the Health Ministry and a business organization are giving away 800,000 condoms for Lovers' Day on Tuesday, the Brazilian version of Valentine's Day. The condoms are to be distributed beginning today in cinemas, newspaper stands and in the companies of the National Business Council to Prevent HIV/AIDS, the group financing the campaign. Brazil also distributes about 200 million condoms a year for free.

FORT MYERS -- Planned Parenthood has begun selling its own brand of condoms, each with a toll-free number for the health organization printed on the product wrapper. Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida put the $2 six-packs on sale at the area's six clinics on Monday.

What the world needs now, according to the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, is about 7 billion more condoms a year. Researchers say they determined that there were approximately 13 billion acts of sexual intercourse on the planet during 1990 in which condoms should have been used. But only an estimated 6 billion condoms were used. The resulting latex gap, the study says, leaves tens of millions at risk of unwanted pregnancy or AIDS infection, including 9 percent of married couples. The authors arrived at the 13 billion figure by assuming that ''every man, single or married, needs a condom for every act of intercourse outside marriage.

To make Florida's adult porn industry safer for performers, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has filed a condom complaint with the state's department of health. The foundation is asking that health officials enforce condom use in the filmmaking done in Florida to help prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Nationally, two performers have tested positive in the last month for HIV, and this year multiple cases of syphilis have been reported, said Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS foundation.

The Condom Nation Caravan -- a distinctive 18-wheeler and accompanying van -- makes a stop in Orlando Tuesday, offering free condoms and HIV testing. It will be the third Florida city for the caravan, an initiative of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation , the largest global AIDS organization. The goal? Distributing more than 50 million condoms in the U.S. and encouraging sexually active recipients to use them. It's an ambitious leap from last year, when the campaign passed out 5.5 million condoms to individuals and social-service agencies in 25 states.

http://www.kidsdr.com With college students heading off to school, I was reminded of a news story about Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, which now provides students with the emergency contraceptive , Plan B , via a vending machine on campus. Although at first this seemed like a "different" idea, the more I researched the issue, the more sense the plan made to me. Plan B is a single pill that contains a higher dose of a progestin (hormone) than a regular birth control pill.

Deputies at the Charlotte County Jail found a condom full of pills inside an inmate's vagina during a strip search, they said Tuesday. Jennifer Creque, 31, of Gulf Cove was being booked into the jail in Punta Gorda early Monday when intake deputies found the condom, investigators said. The condom was lined with cellophane that was taped to prevent the pills from falling out. Deputies found seven morphine , 20 carisoprodol and 69 tramadol pills, they said. Carisoprodol is a muscle relaxant . Tramadol is a painkiller.

Faced with a new law requiring that actors wear condoms during porn shoots, Los Angeles officials have recommended that the City Council begin searching for a medical professional to conduct inspections of adult film performances. In a report to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the council, a working group focused on ways to enforce the condom ordinance said Film L.A. Inc., the office that processes film permits, should rework its applications so passages that deal with hazardous working conditions and dangerous special effects also mention the "transmission of blood and infectious materials.

LOS ANGELES (KTLA) -- Voters in Los Angeles County will get to decide on whether porn actors should be required to wear condoms during filming. AIDS Healthcare Foundation says they collected 371,000 signatures in five months, far exceeding the 232,000 signatures needed -- enough to qualify for the November ballot. The ordinance would apply to commercial filming of adult films and would require production companies to submit to periodic inspections, as well as nominal fees for the city to operate the program.

It won't go down in the history books as a major stride in the fight against sexually transmitted diseases, but it may earn a place in entrepreneurial folklore. It is the world's first drive-through condom shop, which Hollywood, Fla., businessman Richard Schulman has opened in what was a Fotomat booth. Schulman, who offers 18 varieties of condoms at the booth, is banking on the idea that there are lots of people out there who are too shy to go into a drugstore and ask for condoms, but who would feel comfortable purchasing prophylactics from the privacy of their cars.

A female condom program was highly effective in preventing HIV infections, according to a new economic analysis by researchers in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health . The analysis, published in the journal AIDS and Behavior , found the DC Females Condom program, a public-private partnership to provide and promote a type of female condom, prevent enough infections in one year to save more than $8 million in future medical...